A Bun and Fresh Bread
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [With Tight Controls series] It wouldn't be that awkward if he hadn't secretly arrested their (the Matsuda's) son, but for everyone not in the know, it was just another normal day on his end.


A/N: This fic is kickstarting my With Tight Reins series...which'll probably confuse you guys a little because the main fic isn't up yet. There's a few reasons for that disorder - the main one being that this series is for bingo, and a remi is a slave to the order the numbers appear. On the bright side, the main fic is my next number, so it won't be terribly long - unless I fall woefully behind like almost every other bingo card I have at the moment...

Anyway, for the following challenges:

The One Series Bingo, #150 - a slice of life  
The what-if challenge, using the what-ifs - 1) What if Yamaki was a customer at the Matsuda bakery, and 2) What if Yamaki had arrested Takato after the DarkLizarmon incident.  
The Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Steamy Jungle (write a side-story/spin-off)

Enjoy!

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 _With Tight Controls_

 **A Bun and Fresh Bread**

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If only he could survive on coffee, or the far inferior supermarket bread. But he couldn't. If only he hadn't arrested the only son of the closest (and best) bakery in town. But he'd done that. Never mind they weren't aware of that fact. Never mind they probably had no clue why their son still hadn't come home.

He could always drive to a different bakery, but being the way he was, he'd have a list of faults he'd found in it and it wouldn't make for a very enjoyable breakfast. Though going there wouldn't either. Perhaps he could ask Reika to go - but no. The result would only be the same, or worse, and that was the coward's way.

And that meant he couldn't avoid the bakery either.

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The door chime tinkled as he walked in. That was a new addition, and one he wasn't too keen on either. It made an odd, almost grating, noise. The sort that made one turn around and look towars. And that appeared to be its purpose too. The two adults behind the counter stared at the door, and him in its frame. So did the other customers there that early morning.

And they were two familiar customers as well. Friends of Matsuda-kun.

Lovely, he thought. But they didn't seem to recognise him because they simply whispered some comment about the integrity of wearing sunglasses indoors and a suit to the local bakery and then went back to scanning the products.

He watched them. They wound up purchasing quite a bit of bread. Too much for two pre-teen boys. Their words at the counter clarified the issue. 'We're getting Takato-kun's share as well.'

The matriach went misty-eyed at the sentiment and gave them three extra buns. Yamaki was sure one of those was for Matsuda-kun as well.

He watched them leave as well, and then brought his own bread - and an extra bun. Matsuda-san (the father) tallied his purchase at the counter and didn't comment at all on the fact that he'd picked the same bun as those boys, or on the fact that he was the one responsible for their son not coming home and the unpleasant visit that may not have yet taken place.

He didn't tell them either. Anonymity was a relief when no-one could break down in tears or rage and blame him for something that was his doing but not his fault. But how could he explain to two worried parents that he was holding their son for fratenising with an enemy they wouldn't even believe existed.

So he took his purchases and drove to work, knowing full well he'd essentially been running away. But what else was there to do?

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Work was work. There were still Wild Ones emerging from the other side and causing minor degrees of chaos. They were still attempting to delete the creatures from their end, and doing a fairly good job, only getting beaten to the punch a few times by those other kids that had taken Wild Ones as partners.

He knew them. Their names, where they lived... but he didn't know what to do with them. He already had one kid on his hands he didn't quite know what to do with. At the moment, all he could do was try and milk the kid for information, and Matsuda-kun wasn't budging. It didn't help matters that the only thing he seemed to have any idea about was his partner, and not much of an idea at that.

That Guilmon of his was an anomaly among anomalies, but since they didn't know terribly much about the creatures as a whole, they weren't particularly badly off.

But it still caused them trouble, with the brass wanting to know everything that didn't yet exist, with the minor chaos they had to minimise and chaos, with the extra-Hypnos variables running about, with the kid they had locked up and his parents didn't even know where he was...

.

He paid the kid a visit before he left that day. Reika had already dropped off the bun, and lunch afterwards - and a sketchpad and pencils apparently because he found the kid doodling a red dragon that didn't look like the one he'd already seen.

The boy looked up suddenly, scrambled, and dropped the pencils. 'I'm sorry,' he garbled. 'Ootori-san said I looked bored and asked what I liked doing and I said drawing and -'

'Neither of you have done anything wrong,' Yamaki cut in.

'Oh.' Matsuda-kun still looked flustered. 'Umm... can I go? I'm sure my parents are worried...'

'Can you tell us where the red Wild One is hiding?' was Yamaki's response.

The boy's expression turned angry. 'So you can do what you did to that DarkLizarmon? No!'

Of course not. It had been a mistake in more ways than one to let him see that.

'It was necessary,' Yamaki said coolly. 'I don't expect a child to understand, but the mere presence of those Wild Ones - and yes, even the ones who appear to be doing no direct damage - are putting our world in danger.' It was like talking to the government officials. They simply couldn't grasp the necessity, and the difficulty.

But this is a child, he reminded himself. He'd had to remind himself yesterday too, and probably tomorrow as well. He wasn't used to children, and there was no reason he should be used to them. After all, he hadn't entered the career to arrest pre-teen boys - but it had wound up coming to that.

He sighed in annoyance and turned around. The boy made a noise in his throat but said nothing, and until the door closed he didn't reach for his pencils either.

Maybe he should ask Reika to fetch him a few books as well. It would take a few days still, before what they affectionally dubbed the memory eraser would arrive. And it might take them just as long to find that Guilmon - or longer.

But once they had the eraser, they could deal with the other kids as well, and the brass who'd only authorised it for a single use, wouldn't ever have to know. Because those kids could be causing more trouble than it appeared, absorbing that data instead of sending it back where it belonged. That data was going to explode and he was trying to make sure that didn't happen.

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If work was work, then home was home and a bit of work as well. Pretty boring, because there wasn't much room to talk about things except work, and not much to eat except take-out and bread and coffee and the occasional sweet thing like a slice of cake or a crossiant. Maybe there were a few additions the last few days - and the presence of Matsuda-kun seemed to make Reika more relaxed but Yamaki himself more tense, though god forbid that was a sign of her wanting children of her own - but on the whole their lives tended to drag on like that.

Reika sometimes commented on how, when she'd first signed up for Hypnos, she had't realised how much of her life the job would leech. It had simply been a well paying and interesting sounding job for someone fresh out of university, and it was the same for Megumi. Yamaki had chosen the job for different reasons, chosen it because he knew it would turn into a little appreciated but very important job. Sort of like a garbage cleaner, he thought bitterly at times. People wouldn't like living knee-deep in rubbish but never thought much about the people picking them back up.

Today, they talked about the boy they had locked up in Hypnos. Megumi was on the night-shift and she'd look after him - made sure he had dinner, slept at an appropriate time and maybe even give him some fresh air when the streets were quiet and he wouldn't have an audience to make a scene to. All in all, as far as prisoners went, he should be quite comfortable, and he wasn't as unbearable as Yamaki had expected a ten year old to be - but unbearable enough. It would have been much simpler if he'd just handed the red Wild One in instead of harbouring what was, as far as Hypnos was concerned, a danger to society. But, of course, kids had to become attached and it was like telling him he needed to give up his precious pet. Thankfully, it wasn't a regular occurance.

Instead, it was pulling teeth in board meetings, trying to get the required funding and dull their jibes of inadequacy - as though they could do better in keeping the whole debacle about the Wild Ones out of the ears of the general public while protecting them as well. And they were running themselves ragged already, otherwise he was sure he'd have heard more complaints amongst the lesser staff about keeping a ten year old at headquarters without his parents having been, at least, informed. At the moment though, it was simply a sacrifice that had to be made. He'd seen top-secret Government activities, he was harbouring a dangerous Wild One himself, he had contact with other similar children - and that was a surefire way to make such news spread. There simply wasn't any other way to keep a child quiet. They were children after all. Far too young to have the wisdom and restraint of adults. But apparently not young enough to be woefully ignorant.

'You don't like it,' said Reika, peering into his face. 'Do you?'

He shrugged. 'Swap the kid for an old man and it's the same old.'

'With a few modifications.'

It was a sad thought anyway.

'This job really is a leech. Hypnos is a bad name.'

He coughed. The name had been his idea and Reika knew it. She was smiling slightly, but there were lines of tiredness over her eyes still.

'Think I should have called it Tithonus or Khepri instead?' Which would have been a little silly because neither of them lorded leeches specifically - and, in fact, he knew of no god that lorded leeches specifically.

Reika shrugged. 'You could have just called it "Leech". Or Leech Nest."

'We wouldn't need bread or coffee then.' Or salt, but neither of them really indulged in salt. Bread and coffee were however, for them at least, necessities. Fresh bread at that, and good quality, and hence one of them was at the Matsuda bakery at least three times a week.

Hopefully, by the next time, Matsuda Takato will have been taken care of and the interaction could go back to being a pure customer-baker relationship on both fronts.

Not that an outsider looking in would have noticed much difference at all.


End file.
